The New World Order Following Contraction of US National Strength

  The New World Order Following Contraction of US National Strength

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

October 2, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

Janan Ganesh, a columnist of the Financial Times recently contributed a column titled "The United States can no longer carry the world on its shoulders", clearly explaining the reasons why the US, once the guardian of free trade and world order, has forsaken since Trump’s presidency the post-war world order of 70 years, because the US national strength can no longer support this role. The free economic-trade system erected by Europe and the US after WWII has been under attack by the United States. A trade war has broken out between the largest and second largest economies of the world, further escalating into a conflict of strategic interests, so much so that global free trade operations are now situated in a strategic hithertofore unseen crisis.

The free trade mode, oriented toward market economy, free trade, and lowering barriers, has been the main thinking in the international community for 70 years, and the United States has been the most important pillar of operations. However, Trump has dealt free trade two heavy blows, one negating the value of free trade, tearing up free trade agreements, withdrawing from the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement), and rocking the conviction that the world has had toward the Western free trade system. The other blow is retaliatory tariffs forcing other countries to make concessions, especially declaring an all-out war on China; China has also hit back with intensity, issuing a white paper rebutting various accusations of the Trump government. In the two blows of Trump, the former collapses the central thinking of the world economy and trade, while the latter impacts countless operators and consumers, as the coming of a gigantic tsunami.

Europe, similarly impacted by the Trump tsunami, chose a stance to persist in its convictions at a most difficult moment, proactively shouldering the role of safeguarding free trade, resisting with all efforts the anti-globalization, anti-free trade waves. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Junker paid a visit to China in July, exchanging views on such issues as the further opening of economic and trade by both parties and the future challenges of world trade. Subsequently, he then went to Japan and signed a Japan-Europe Free Trade Agreement with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; then he arrived in Washington to lobby Trump, hoping that Trump would understand the depth and breadth of mutual reliance in global trade, as well as the significance of the free trade system to the international economy.

The efforts made by the EU to safeguard global free trade operations ought to remind the US and China that the free trade system is invaluable to the world economy and people's livelihood, and the responsibility of major powers to global economic co-prosperity. China has always been self-reliant, being not afraid of engaging in trade wars; however, in the 21st century, US national strength is gradually contracting, China cannot leave the world, and the world all the more cannot leave China. The EU and world trade channels are an opportunity to erect a new world order.

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